Hi, I don't know if this is an OS issue or hardware issue so please bear with me.
Problem:
I have a 3 year old Toshiba laptop. Last month, the frequency of overheating and sudden shut downs increased. This I believe caused my current problem (or not). The problem is that when I press the power on button, the laptop powers up, fans turn on, and the Toshiba logo appears, but then the screen is black (actually there is a faint backlight). The Power LED is on, but the hard drive LED is off and it will stay like this unless I press F1 (which I found out by random), which for some reason wakes up the hard drive and then start up continues and I get the black Windows logo screen with the loading bar. I was also told it could be that my hard drive is failing but I don't know if that is true.
Measures taken:
I have cleaned out the heatsink so now the laptop no longer overheats and shuts down. And I upgraded my RAMs. I used to have two 256MB memory modules, and I replaced one of them with a 512MB module. The computer runs smoother and faster, but the start up is still slow and of course won't work unless I press the F1 button at the black screen. I tried using one of the pinned Drive diagnostic utilities but they require a floppy diskette drive, which I lack.
Bottom line:
I am worried that one day the F1 solution won't work and then I will have no options. And if it’s the hard drive, then what do I do? Please help.
Thank you!
Problem:
I have a 3 year old Toshiba laptop. Last month, the frequency of overheating and sudden shut downs increased. This I believe caused my current problem (or not). The problem is that when I press the power on button, the laptop powers up, fans turn on, and the Toshiba logo appears, but then the screen is black (actually there is a faint backlight). The Power LED is on, but the hard drive LED is off and it will stay like this unless I press F1 (which I found out by random), which for some reason wakes up the hard drive and then start up continues and I get the black Windows logo screen with the loading bar. I was also told it could be that my hard drive is failing but I don't know if that is true.
Measures taken:
I have cleaned out the heatsink so now the laptop no longer overheats and shuts down. And I upgraded my RAMs. I used to have two 256MB memory modules, and I replaced one of them with a 512MB module. The computer runs smoother and faster, but the start up is still slow and of course won't work unless I press the F1 button at the black screen. I tried using one of the pinned Drive diagnostic utilities but they require a floppy diskette drive, which I lack.
Bottom line:
I am worried that one day the F1 solution won't work and then I will have no options. And if it’s the hard drive, then what do I do? Please help.
Thank you!